WHY DOES MUSIC MOVE US?

Have you listened to music in the last day or two? Why did you? What is the point of music? Clearly it has power over us. Music can make us run faster, learn better, buy more, even recover from surgery sooner. Music can move us to new spiritual heights or steel our hearts for battle. Music seems to be a human universal. So why do people from different cultures experience the same music differently?

TRBQ paid a visit to the United House of Prayer for All People in Harlem to spend some time with a gospel brass band called the McCullough Sons of Thunder. And we talked with some neuroscientists who study our perceptions of music.

I stood in the entrance of the exhibition hall and looked out at the rows of people, extending as far as the eye could see, as they tried out the latest saxophones, trumpets, and cymbals. Amid the crush of bodies and discordant sounds I said to myself: “What the hell am I doing here? This is a terrible mistake.” I had died and gone to band nerd hell. (more…)